Kristen+Clowater

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** Aspartame** ======

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Are you like me and enjoy soda pop? How many of you like //diet// soda? Personally, I don’t like diet soda because I found out it has aspartame in it. Most gums have it as well. It’s an artificial sugar substitute in foods and beverages. One of aspartame’s breakdown products is phenylalanine, a crystalline, water-soluble, essential amino acid. It’s a necessity in a human’s nutrition and is mainly obtained from skim milk or egg whites. Since the 1970s, tests have proven that doses of aspartame can cause brain tumours in rats and more recent studies have found that even just small doses can increase the incidence of lymphomas and leukemia along with brain tumours in rats. However, in __people__, it can cause headaches, dizziness, and hallucinations after consuming it. [] [] []======


 * Sodium Nitrite (Sodium Nitrate) **

Sodium Nitrite (or Sodium Nitrate) is used as a preservative, coloring, and flavouring in various processed meats such as bacon, ham, hot dogs, luncheon meats, corned beef, and also smoked fish. These preservatives, coloring, and flavoring can lead to the formation of cancer causing chemicals known as //nitrosamines.// The definition of nitrosamines is "any of a series of compounds with the type formula R2NNO, some of which are carcinogenic, formed in cured meats by the conversion of nitrite".

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Food Coloring **

When you were little, did your mom make you frosted baked goods and then used food coloring to color the frosting? My mom always did that for me and it was my favorite part. However, now I'm more cautious of which food colorings I use. 'Blue 1' is used in candy, beverages, and baked goods and may cause cancer! 'Blue 2' is found in pet food, candy and beverages and has cause brain tumors in mice. Another one, 'Red 3', is used in fruit cocktails as well as baked goods and candy. It rats, it causes thyroid tumors and could possibly cause these in humans as well. Then, ;Yellow 6', is the third most often used food coloring. It's found in many products such as baked goods, candy, gelatin, and sausages. It's been found to cause adrenal gland (a pair of glands located above the kidneys) and kidney tumors. It also contains small amounts of many carcinogens.

So I don't plan to overlook too many food colorings in my food or beverages any more.

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 * Composition of Air **

Air is everywhere around us, and most of us seem to care about it just as much as how fast the grass is growing outside our windows. However, air has an incredible composition that I was a little interested to hear about. I don't know about you, but I had no idea how many chemicals were in the simple matter that's in front of my face everyday.

Air is a mixture of gaseous chemicals, the main ones are nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and a lot more.

Some of the other chemicals that are composed in air are Hydrogen, Argon, Neon, Helium, Krypton, Xenon. There's also a few more such as, sulfer dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, iodine, carbon dioxide and ammonia.

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**Vanilla Extract** Earlier today I was baking chocolate chip cookies, and I noticed on the bottle of vanilla extract that alcohol was listed as one of the ingredients. This made me rather curious, so I began researching it. The truth of the matter is that most of the vanilla on the market that people use in their cooking and baking doesn’t even come close to the real thing. Vanilla extract is produced by steeping (a process used to “wet thoroughly” with a liquid) in a water and alcohol solution for several months. The FDA requires that vanilla extract contains 13.35 ounces of vanilla and 35% alcohol. So, don’t drink vanilla extract straight!

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**Organic Mercury**

Do you remember last week in class when Mrs. Lightfoot mentioned something called 'Organic Mercury' in passing during class? Well, I thought it sounded interesting, so I decided to do a wikipost on that.

Well, organic mercury is found in three different compounds; methylmercury, ethylmercury and phenylmercury. The first, methylmercury is the most toxic and is formed from elemental mercury that's found in the enviornment. The second one, ethylmercury, is found in thimerosal which was used in childhood vaccinations and contact lens solutions, but now you can get vaccinations that are thimerosal-free. The final one, phenylmercury, used to be used in latex paints; however, it hasn't been available since 1991.

The first two can easily be taken in by breathing it in or by consuming it. The third one can't be well absorbed through the skin or consumed. Note that all three of these are highly toxic and, if ingested, could cause either acute or chronic exposure depending on the age, dose, and route of exposure of the person.

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 * Fluoride Content in Children's Toothpaste **

As most of you know, Alysha and I are doing a fluoride analysis for our ILF project. However, because I'm a little tired and couldn't come up with any other ideas for a post, I decided to do one relating to our project.

As we were testing our samples, I was reading over some of the warning and directions on the various toothpastes. On our one children's toothpaste sample, it said "Warning: If swallowed, contact poison control centre". I found this rather odd, and after testing the samples, we discovered that the children's toothpaste had one of the highest readings for fluoride. After seeing all of this, I began to wonder why children's toothpaste has more fluoride in it.

Turns out that the companies put the minimal lethal dose of fluoride in the toothpaste. It's described as "Probable Toxic Dose" in the medical world and has the potential to severely poison or kill someone. This dose contains 5mg/kg of fluoride and the kgs are in reference to the weight of the child. All children toothpastes that are sold in the States contain the PTD.

Sadly, every year, there's thousands of reports to poison control concerning poisoning due to fluoride in toothpastes. Children will enjoy the taste and swallow it and therefore gets a lethal dosage of fluoride.You can also get an acute exposure to fluoride which also results in a call to poison control.

So remember kids, swallow your toothpaste, and you might be putting in a call to Poison Control! So spit and rinse every time!

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**Organic Foods**

Do any of your parents buy you organic food in hopes that it won't be full of the cancer-causing pesticides like other fruits and veggies? Well, sadly, they're not exactly correct on that one.

Organic farmers use just as much pesticides than any other farmers, possibly more. One pesticide they use, called pyrethrum, has been labelled as a likely human carcinogen. However, this pesticide degrades quite rapidly so that we consume much less.

Pyrethrum is the oldest pesticide known to man and is extracted from a chrysanthemum that's grown in Africa and it's a nerve poison that the plants evolved to fight off insects.

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